Last week­end I had an oppor­tu­nity to join the 65,000+ peo­ple in Portland’s Water­front Park to see Barak Obama and I must say wow. It’s not so much that Barak is a politi­cian as he is a great speaker, who really makes you believe what he’s say­ing. I’m sure for many peo­ple it’s dif­fi­cult to look at the idea of hav­ing a new pres­i­dent and be excited to hear what they have to say. For years and years all peo­ple have felt towards politi­cians is a sense of dis­trust and over­all apa­thy for their ideas and the posi­tions and which they stand for. Early on I could see that with Barak Obama this would be different.

Many peo­ple have sug­gested that sup­port­ing Barak lately has been part of “Obama Fever” or what­ever buzz term they’re using to describe his unprece­dented approval rat­ing and over­all fan­dom. I cant’ say this is the case, I mean if you’ve had a chance to lis­ten to the man speak, it’s not about lik­ing him for being pop­u­lar, it’s about lik­ing his ideas, that also hap­pen to be pop­u­lar. I won’t go into detail regard­ing why the things he speaks about are good, because I’m sure you already know why they are, but I will say that the charisma in which he presents his ideas is awe inspir­ing an d unmatched by any of his opponents.

I stood in line for just about 3 hours on Sun­day in the heat of an unusu­ally Summer-Inspired Ore­gon day, and was amazed not only with the amount of peo­ple who were in front and behind me in line, but with the positive-oriented inten­sity in which all these other fans of Barak Obama had gath­ered to see and speak about Barak. I was pretty dis­ap­pointed I missed The Decem­berists, con­sid­er­ing they played an hour-long free set, but being part of the line to see Barak was more of an expe­ri­ence than is typ­i­cally asso­ci­ated with a polit­i­cal rally, or rather wait­ing in line for any large event.

All and all I’m extremely excited to see Barak Obama take the pres­i­dency, and for me it’s not so much about a “change” that each can­di­date seems to be promis­ing, but it’s the integrity and over­all good-hearted-ness that Barak brings to the table. Lis­ten­ing to him speak I actu­ally believed every­thing he was say­ing, mostly because he was inspir­ing peo­ple not by promis­ing them things (which most can­di­dates can’t deliver), but by sug­gest­ing how by every­one work­ing together, we can improve Amer­ica. That’s the key, he isn’t the cat­a­lyst for change, we are; and by de-throning him­self and putting the power of pol­i­tics into the hands of Amer­i­cans, there might actu­ally be a hope for this country.